In this third article of a weekly mentoring series published to the PMI Toronto chapter Career Development Mentoring (CDM) Program, we switch focus to mentor approaches to the main categories of mentee goals. Possibly the most difficult mentor challenge is when a new mentee says, “I need a mentor to help me to get out of this industry and to change my profession as well”.

So why is this a relatively difficult challenge for the mentor?
It is because the mentor has to ensure that they listen actively during the face-to-face sessions with a view to supporting and guiding the mentee, but not cross the line of becoming a crutch support, or weekly “agony aunt” for the mentee.

Why would a mentee want to change everything?

There can many reasons why a mentee might wish to transition away from their industry and profession. Mentors on the first hand, need to build trust with the mentee and to get closer to establishing the root cause of the mentee’s objective, and then elicit whether the mentee truly wishes to make a long-term change, as opposed to a short-term response as below.

Statements like the following sometimes appear during the first meeting:

· “I need to escape”

· “I realize I made a bad decision with this job”

· “I am burnt out with this role”

· “I hate my boss”

· “My boss hates me and is holding back my career”

· “I don’t understand this industry”

· “I will never be able to grow in this environment”

· “I cannot control my career direction anymore”

One of the key roles of a mentor is to help guide the mentee from a “moving away from x” to a “moving towards my goal” mindset during the 3-month program.

Achieve the objective of establishing the current situation

If the mentee can properly establish their current position within the timeframe of a few mentor meetings, then a major milestone will have been achieved. The next steps would be as follows:

· The mentor advises the mentee of the risks of changing both industry and profession simultaneously. One of those risks would include the lack of experience on both fronts which may lead to a lower chance of being hired within a short time period.

· The mentee evaluates and documents their experience and skills being used in their current situation, particularly any transferrable soft skills.

· The mentor should ensure that the mentee knows their strengths and weakness, and what they can currently offer to a prospective employer.

· The mentee should build their thoughts on their expected timeframe to complete the change the industry and profession.

· The mentor can assist in evaluating the timeline and ask questions so that the mentee gets a more realistic idea about the feasibility of the potential change.

· At this point the mentee needs to research the industries and roles that they might be interested in, and simultaneously the mentor would activate their network in order to find peers that might be willing to offer an information interview to the mentee.

· It is important that the mentor proceeds at a pace that is slow enough for the mentee to do detailed research, but fast enough to give the relationship some momentum.

Supporting the mentee and moving toward action

Once the mentee has a more objective view of how to get out of their current situation (“Taking back control of their own career”), the mentor can be more effective in helping the mentee establish positive goals and discuss options and risks for the way forward.

The PMI Toronto Career Development Mentoring Program approach

As we setup the matching process within the CDM Program we analyse the additional requests of the mentees particularly if they wish to change industry and/or profession, and then pair those mentees with our more experienced mentors.

We encourage networking amongst the cohorts so that knowledge and advice can flow in a cross-industry and cross-professional manner.

Our program has been developed and continuously improved over multiple cohorts, but a common thread has always been the focus on developing careers for PMI project management professionals as technologies evolve. One measure of success is the number of mentees who later return to the program to become mentors.

Finally, we are an enthusiastic team continually looking to improve the program and break the status-quo for mentoring programs. We look forward to your comments and feedback.

Please note that this article is not intended to constitute psychological advice in any shape or form.